Category: OverDrive

For Marlene’s birthday I got her a new iPad. Since her work involves reading and reviewing ebooks, and since the iPad has become her primary ebook reader, transferring the books from her old iPad to the new one was critical. Since she uses a number of ebook apps, this gave us an opportunity to answer the (not-so) age-old question: when you open the new box, are the ebooks still alive and meowing?

We set up the new iPad using one of the recommended approaches:

Sync the old iPad with iTunes.

Make a backup of the old iPad using iTunes.

Hook up the new iPad to the computer and choose to restore from the backup.

After the restoration, wait for iTunes to finish syncing apps and content to the new iPad.

How did the the various apps do?

iBooks — success. All of the titles came over.

Amazon Kindle for iPad — success. The list of titles came over. It was necessary to re-download them, but that came as no surprise.

Barnes and Noble Nook — success. The list of titles came over; as with the Kindle app, it was necessary to re-download the books.

Bluefire Reader — success. Everything came over, although it was necessary to re-enter the Adobe DRM credentials.

Google Play Books — success. Same story as the Kindle and Nook apps.

Kobo for iPad — success. At least, apparently so. The default titles came over, but this app is one that Marlene looked at but never actively used.

However, there was one failure: the OverDrive app for iPad. When we opened it on the new iPad, the bookshelf was empty!

Of course, the primary purpose of this app is to display ebooks and audiobooks from OverDrive’s library service, but it will happily store and open EPUB files, and you don’t even need the OverDrive Media Console application on your PC. You can just download an EPUB from Safari on the iPad and open it in OverDrive. Because of apparent capacity issues with Bluefire reader, there was a period of Marlene had started using the OverDrive app to handle some of the overflow; in particular, she used it for non-DRM EPUBs.

But therein lies the rub… as near as I can tell, the OverDrive app turns out to be the Hotel California of iOS EPUB readers. Since the restore and iTunes sync obviously hadn’t brought the ebooks over, I started looking for ways to manually transfer them. The first place I looked was in the File Sharing feature in iTunes:

If OverDrive supported app file sharing, I could have used iTunes to copy the ebooks from the old iPad to the new one. Unfortunately… it doesn’t.

My next step was scanning through the OverDrive app to see if it offered a way to download or email the files. I came up with nothing.

Finally, I turned to my favorite reference librarian Google… and came up with a lot of folks complaining about how iOS5 and the recent update of the app apparently don’t play well together for audiobooks, but nothing relevant to my efforts. So, if you’ve made this far into the post and have ideas about how to transfer the books… I’m all ears.

Ultimately, if we don’t find a way to make the transfer, the effective loss will be small, as Marlene has current files for all of the titles in the OverDrive app with the exception of three titles she had downloaded via iOS Safari from NetGalley that have since been removed from the active download list. One irony is that those three ebooks are in open EPUB format; if only we could get to the files, any EPUB reader app could display them.

This is all a perfect storm of circumstances that could drive somebody who is unlike me (by expecting that software will actually work all the time) back into the comfortable but heavy arms of physical books:

Ebook DRM can punish the reader. Marlene and I are perfectly willing to pay for ebooks (though of course, most of the time she doesn’t have to because of the number of egalleys and ARCs she reviews), but in the case of the OverDrive app, were I to make a charitable guess, DRM inspired a design compromise for the OverDrive app that lead to app file sharing not being enabled, even for non-DRM ebooks.

Apple’s iOS backup and syncing model has pitfalls for the unwary. In particular, backing up to iTunes does not back up everything, and syncing with iTunes does not necessary cover content that wasn’t purchased via iTunes. Want a real full backup of your iOS device? It seems like you can get one only if you jailbreak it. By the way, I really hope to be proven wrong on this.

It’s a truism that preserving ebooks require the reader to work harder. You can leave a physical book sitting around and expect it to stay put (and even a very industrious cat isn’t going to push a book very far); one has to actually think in order to keep one’s ebooks available as time, hardware upgrades, and fashions in digital format pass. But it’s even harder if one has to work to get one’s hands on the ebook file.

Using apps for anything other than their exact intended purpose can have unexpected pitfalls. As an EPUB reader, the OverDrive app is arguably decent, but at the moment I can no longer recommend it for any purpose other than using OverDrive’s service. I hope future updates of the app will make it easier to transfer titles to new iOS devices and to back up any non-library ebooks that a user chooses to read in OverDrive.

In conclusion (and to further inflict quantum mechanics metaphors on the reader), despite all of the advantages of ebooks, ebook users must still keep the Ebook Uncertainty Principle in mind: without care (and ideally access to discrete, non-DRM ebook files that you can back up), the long-term availability of ebooks that you purchase is at best a little uncertain.

On February 9, Penguin Books announced that it has pulled out of its contract with OverDrive to supply ebooks and downloadable audiobooks to libraries. The effective date of Penguin’s withdrawal from the library space is February 10.

Are you watching all those birds in tuxedos? They’re marching away.

The penguins have been milling around since November 2011, ever since Penguin Books stopped providing new titles for libraries through OverDrive. Since November, only their backlist has been available. So a library could get added copies of the first 33 books in J.D. Robb’s In Death series, but when the 34th book comes out in February, libraries won’t be able to get it.

This decision doesn’t just affect OverDrive. Penguin Books are not available through 3M, OverDrive’s newest competition. And they won’t be. Penguin Books doesn’t have a contract with 3M.

As of this writing, Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with OverDrive, so that libraries won’t lose access to the Penguin ebooks they currently have in their catalogs. In other words, the ebooks the libraries purchased last October. And the added copies they purchased last month.

That’s the thing about ebook purchases: they usually aren’t purchases. They’re usually licenses. This is a point where libraries need to read the fine print in the contract with their vendors.

So without that “continuance agreement,” Penguin can withdraw all their content. All their ebooks, all their audiobooks. In an infamous 2009 incident Amazon erased copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindles when it turned out that the particular edition users had purchased was being sold by a publisher that didn’t happen to have the rights to sell it.

If Penguin withdraws OverDrive’s right to lend Penguin content, the same thing could happen to libraries. Penguin content could disappear overnight.

Penguin Books published Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. It’s too bad that the recent meeting between the leaders of the American Library Association and top executives of Penguin Books as well as other Big 6 publishers did not “help” Penguin to reach a conclusion more favorable to libraries than this complete withdrawal. For the sake of library patrons everywhere, I hope that Penguin will see the light on this issue and reach a “continuation agreement” with OverDrive soon.

This story may sound slightly familiar. Penguin Books has decided to opt out of the Library ebook market. The company is citing “security concerns“, much in the same way that Harper Collins cited the “need to protect their authors” when they imposed the 26-circulation cap on library ebook lending back in February 2011.

The same rules are applying in both cases, Harper Collins picked a date, and any item purchased before that date had unlimited loans–anything after that date was subject to the “Rule of 26”. Penguin is doing the same thing: anything purchased before a specific date, the libraries get to keep (without Kindle lending options). Anything after that date, well there is no after. Any library who has a lot of fans of Penguin authors is going to have a lot of unhappy patrons.

Although most of the focus is on OverDrive, because that’s the way most public libraries get their ebook content and deliver it to patrons, a Penguin statement refers to all library lending, not just OverDrive — and not just the Kindle Lending Library, either.

Random House is now the librarian’s best friend in the ebook marketplace. They are the only one of the “Big 6” publishers that provides new titles and doesn’t cap lending. Hachette Group still allows unfettered access, but they hang on to their new ebooks for a while before libraries get access. That still makes them way friendlier than everyone else in this increasingly cold marketplace.

The irony in this news comes from the survey released last month from Library Journal‘s Patron Profiles. According to the survey data, library users are a publisher’s best customers. Not just because the libraries themselves provide a steady market, but because people who check out books from the library buy more books. And the data says this is just as true for ebooks as it is for print books. This is one of those things that librarians always knew, but it is excellent to see it backed up with statistics.

So, instead of library borrowing cutting into sales, what really happens is that library usage allows readers to find authors they really like. When they find an author they like, they go out and buy more books from that author, whether they are print books or ebooks. Penguin Books has just cut themselves out of that channel for introducing readers to their authors.

Penguin Book Group is the publisher of the Complete Idiot’s Guides. How appropriate.

Kindle books have arrived at an OverDrive library near you! Or they will any minute now. The two libraries I have access to (I only moved in June, my old library card hasn’t expired yet) both have it.

Does it work? Yes, it works. I tried it, and got an ebook. It works for Kindle apps, not just Kindles.

So, what does this mean?

This is a classic good news/bad news scenario. The good news is that more people will want to use the library’s resources. The good news is that more people will be aware that the library has something that they want. In the ereader marketplace, more than 70% of the market is owned by Amazon and its Kindle. And it’s a very big market. The Harris Poll released on September 19 shows that one in six Americans has an ereader. More than two-thirds of those ereaders are Kindles. Until this week, Kindle owners were unserved by libraries, today they aren’t. That’s a big influx of users into an already rising tide.

The other huge part of this is mindshare. When most people see someone using an ereader, they automatically think “Kindle”, no matter what the device is. I have an iPad, and to most folks of the even slightly geeky persuasion, iPads are very different from Kindles. But in airports, people will still ask me, “Is that a Kindle?” To a lot of people, Kindles mean ebooks. Now that libraries serve Kindle books, we’ve arrived. We know we were already there, but this is a major PR moment that libraries can grab.

And we need to grab it, because this is going to have some…not so good impacts too. Ebook usage was already rocketing skyward in public libraries. Adding the huge number of Kindle owners to the borrower pool is going to send those numbers into the next galaxy. So this will increase demand on a finite supply. Not a finite supply of bits and bytes, but a finite supply of dollars and cents. Library budgets have been slashed everywhere. If demand for ebooks increases exponentially, that does not mean that demand for print books will decrease exponentially. Yes, it is possible, even probable that some users will switch from print books to ebooks if ebooks are available, but not everyone in every format.

We should use this opportunity to promote ourselves and get all the good spin out of this we can. Amazon certainly is. When a Kindle user selects the “Get for Kindle” option from the library’s OverDrive site, they go through a normal library checkout process, and then they are transferred to Amazon’s site for the download. When the user completes the download, what do they see? Other Amazon Kindle titles recommended for them to purchase, based on whatever they just downloaded from your library.

Today, Kindle users can borrow ebooks from their local library. The Harris Poll also confirmed previous studies that ereader owners read more books and buy more ebooks. Amazon gets the library borrowers out of the library site and onto the Amazon site in order to try to sell them more ebooks. There isn’t anything wrong with that. That’s why Amazon is in business in the first place. OverDrive finally gets to offer a Kindle option. That piece has been missing from their service for eons. This is a very big win for OverDrive.

And this is a big win for libraries. Not just because we can finally say “yes” when Kindle owners ask us if they can borrow ebooks. Saying “yes” is definitely better than saying “no”. But because being part of this revolution/evolution could be a way of getting focus on the library for something relatively cool, and we have a chance to leverage that focus into support.

In the April 27 Industry News from Publisher’s Weekly, Amazon reported that sales in their ebook division jumped 63% in the first quarter of 2011. That was pretty much their good news. Their bad news, underlaying a certain amount of spin, was that even though revenues were up across the board, their actual income was down. What’s up with that? Amazon is investing in even more technology and more infrastructure to meet ever-increasing demands.

According to the report, Kindle owners are larger-volume ebook buyers than non-Kindle owners. That can’t be a surprise, considering that Kindle owners are locked into purchasing ebooks from Amazon. This is a marketing strategy that is older than dirt, after all. The earlier version went something like this: “the razor is cheap, it’s the blades that are expensive.” The new, cheaper advertising-supported Kindle is being released early in order to take even greater advantage of this.

Amazon’s recent announcement that they will provide Kindle format ebooks via Overdrive is also part of this strategy. Up until this week, Kindle owners couldn’t borrow ebooks from their libraries. Now, they know they will soon be able to, for an admittedly undefined value of soon. This eliminates a clear advantage that Barnes and Noble’s Nook had. However, to recap the latest round of the ereader wars, B&N just announced a major upgrade to the color Nook that pushes it way above just an ereader. The review of the new color Nook in this morning’s USA Today shows that the new Color Nook is more of a baby Android powered iPad than just an ereader.

But back to the point about Kindles, what this means is, more reasons for people to buy Kindles or fewer reasons for people not to buy Kindles, so, more Kindles out there. And Kindle owners buy more ebooks from Amazon than non-Kindle owners, however else they might get their ebooks. The announcement about the Amazon/Overdrive deal got an amazing amount of press for something relating to libraries, but it was all related to the fact that the name “Amazon” was in it. Amazon got a lot of mindshare out of something that will probably cost them next to nothing.

It’s also clear from the sheer numbers that ebook buyers actually buy more books than print book buyers. No surprise there. If you are sitting in an airport, shopping for ebooks before your flight, guessing what you’ll like, there is a certain amount of glee at the sheer ease of purchasing without having to think of carrying the things. There are other factors. Ebooks are still generally cheaper than hardcovers, Michael Connelly notwithstanding. There is also the instant gratification factor that simply can’t be underestimated.

What does this mean for libraries? Just Amazon saying that Kindle users would be able to borrow ebooks from libraries generated huge press, even without specifics. Demand for ebooks, which is already huge, is going to skyrocket. The amount of general interest press that covered the Amazon announcement showed that ebooks and ereaders have reached well beyond techies and young people and whatever early adopter market people might have thought and spread well into general users everywhere. For anyone who doubts this, next time you travel, while you are at the airport waiting for your flight, just look around at the number of people reading on ereaders or iPads vs. “dead tree” books. The percentage will be 1/3 or more.

Many public libraries have the collection philosophy “give ’em what they want”. It is due to that philosophy that we have invested heavily in best selling fiction, and moved as deeply as we have into AV material. But ebooks seem like a whole new ball game in some ways. Especially since we are trying to divide a budget pie that is shrinking into an increasing number of pieces, and ebooks are just another piece. The same title is now demanded in print, large print, audiobook, ebook, and eaudio, and multiple copies of each. Meanwhile the demands for DVDs, music and children’s material certainly have not gone away. Because ebooks are new, it can seem simplest not to invest, or not to invest a lot, to say that there isn’t enough demand in the community, or that the library can’t afford it. Or that people still want print books, not ebooks. But if you build a good ebook collection, they will come. It takes time and money. Unfortunately, those are the two commodities no library seems to have enough of these days.

However, the demand for ebooks is like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill and picking up speed, as well as rocks and twigs, as it rolls down. If your library has that philosophy of “give ’em what they want”, then ebooks are looking more and more like what a significant segment of the public wants. The trick will be smoothing the rocks and twigs out of that snowball as we give it to them.

People who have Amazon Kindles will finally be able to borrow ebooks from their local library. This is a good thing for user service, whatver questions librarians may have about the forces that are moving behind the scenes on this one.

Why do I say this is a good thing for user service? Saying yes beats this scenario–excited patron calls up, because they just purchased a new Kindle and they want to borrow ebooks from their local library. The staff has to tell them that the library doesn’t have anything for them, and has no way of knowing if they ever will. Patron is generally upset, because, well, they just bought this new toy and want to use it. Patrons do not want to understand about formats, they don’t care about Amazon’s lock-in on its consumers (if they did, they wouldn’t have bought a Kindle in the first place), and they pay taxes in the community and they feel entitled to the services they paid for. If ebooks are available for other people, they should be available for everyone. There is no survivable way to explain to a taxpayer that they should have done their research first. For front-end service, this solves a major problem.

But all the questions about exactly how this is going to work are still open. Based on OverDrive’s own blogpost/press release, they are going to simply make any ebook currently available to libraries available in Kindle format in addition to the current formats. Whether this means both PDF and ePUB or just ePUB remains to be seen. The OverDrive blog is very clear that there will not be anything available that isn’t available now, so Simon & Schuster and Macmillan are not coming to the library table, and the 26 lending limit for Harper Collins titles will still be crosses that libraries have to bear. Or, to put it another way, #HCOD is alive and well, and it has been joined by #AZOD.

There is an awful lot that we still don’t know about this deal. Just because there is no “up front” cost to libraries to add the Kindle format ebooks, doesn’t mean this won’t somehow figure into OverDrive’s platform fee. And it probably has to. And it’s worth it to be able to say “yes” to all those patrons instead of “no”. But many libraries would prefer to see the price tag openly, and opt in or out accordingly.

All the press releases agree that users will be able to retain their margin notes from one checkout to another, but none say how that will work. It sounds like patron data is being retained, but by whom? By Amazon? Is that opt-in or opt-out, or is there any option at all? OverDrive says that “users’ confidential information will be protected”, but who is deciding what is confidential, and who is doing the protecting?

Also, when is this actually going to happen? Library users who have Kindles have probably been calling their local libraries all day. Saying “soon” will only hold them for so long.

Has anyone else noticed that this announcement came very hard on the heels of the announcement about Recorded Books moving their digital audio to Ingram? And that was on top of the Ingram/OCLC announcement about making ebooks available to ILL through Ingram. Wouldn’t it be great if a second player with good contacts in the industry challenged OverDrive for their monopoly?